I'm almost exclusively a Johnny Mathis and Bing Crosby guy when it comes to holiday music, but if your tastes are more eclectic than mine, you may enjoy Apple's holiday gift of a free, eight-song playlist.

You'll find Apple's offer in the Apple Store app -- not to be confused with the App Store -- for the iPhone (but, oddly, not in the Apple Store iPad app.) From the Holiday tab, scroll down to the Holiday Cheer menu item. Tap on it and then tap the Download button, at which point you'll get kicked over … Read more

Spotify has launched a new Web site in an effort to make its business model more transparent to artists and other music professionals. Along the way, the company also announced interesting details on just how much cash it doles out.

According to Spotify, its new site is designed to provide additional insight into its operation through the use of data and business analysis. As part of that, Spotify said on Monday that it has issued $1 billion in royalties since its inception in 2009. At this time last year, its total royalty payout was at $500 million, meaning during 2013 … Read more

After trimming staff last month to save money, online subscription music service Rdio has named Anthony Bay -- a former Amazon, Microsoft and Apple exec -- as chief executive.

Bay will succeed longtime CEO Drew Larner, who will become vice chairman and an adviser to the board, Rdio said Tuesday in its announcement.

The streaming segment is the music industry's area of greatest growth, but it's intensely competitive, and Rdio has been going up against rivals that beat it either in global reach, like Spotify; in profitability, like Slacker; or in pure size, like Pandora.

Glass owners who previously had sideloaded the Google Play Music app Music2.apk are advised to uninstall it before installing the official Glassware version. Otherwise, the official app will not install. … Read more

Grammy Award winning recording engineer Bruce Swedien received his first nomination in 1962 for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry," and Swedien went on to record and mix most of Michael Jackson's albums, including "Thriller," the best-selling album of all time. Swedien also worked with Donna Summer and has been nominated for a total of 13 Grammys.

I know, times being what they are for the music business, it seems like a crazy, even contrarian thing to do. But Rough Trade just opened a 15,000-square-foot record store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in New York. The store only sells new CDs and LPs, no used stuff, along with various music-related merch like books and magazines.

Rough Trade NYC is a big, wide-open, converted warehouse space -- it feels like it's been there for a long, long time. Rough Trade has a similar, but much smaller, shop in London, which opened in 2007, and it's doing fine. … Read more

Torch Music includes tons of music videos and playlist capabilities, but its default player leaves a lot to be desired. In most cases, the app just grabs videos from YouTube, keeps the same player, and limits what you can do with it. While that hurts the app, its playlists and social sharing help make it useful for most music fans.

Torch Music lets you insert the name of a song, artist, or album and listen to it without ads or interruptions. The app organizes artists into their albums, so you can listen to an entire album in the order the … Read more

Background music to keep playing while you use other apps. Uninterrupted playback -- so no ads. Offline play so you can watch videos and listen to music away from Wi-Fi without devouring your data allowance.

Further code hints that you'll be able to download a whole playlist to watch offline, and choose which definition the video … Read more